Those Who Falter and Those Who Fall
by LaJavertine
Summary: Poor Javert; he can't even succeed at killing himself. With his existence wiped out in the minds of all who knew him in Paris, he returns to the far reaches of his past. Bad summary, I know. My first posting.
1. Chapter 1

**Obligatory Copyright Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Les Miserables. Also, I have no valuable possessions and make just barely enough to support myself, so if you sue me, you will be very disappointed.**

**This is my first Les Mis story, not to mention my first post. Reviews/comments are appreciated.**

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_Everything hurts._

The realization jarred Javert's mind awake, though his body was far slower in responding. His head rang with a headache, his bones and joints screamed with pain even though he was at rest. He tried to open his eyes and shut them once again, the light too bright to bear. Every muscle felt as if a great wave had smashed him into a rocky shore.

_Waves. . . water. . . rocks. . . the Seine. Falling. . ._

_Where am I?_

He forced himself to roll over onto his side. He was lying down, that was certain. Not in his bed, nor on the ground. As he lay there, the exertion of simply turning over having driven him to near exhaustion, he could smell fresh-cut hay. Slowly he raised a hand to his eyes to shield them, then cracked his eyelids a tiny bit. The light did not seem so bright any more, and he discovered that what little illumination there was came from a covered lantern hanging just above his head. It swung gently, casting flickering shadows across the canvas roof.

_Canvas roof? Why is the lantern swinging? Mother of God, it's not my imagination, we're actually moving._

The cart--with his head clearing, Javert could tell he was riding in a cart--bounced and creaked slowly down the road. It was obvious that the driver was in no hurry. Javert lay in a blanket-covered pile of straw, with another blanket, tattered but still warm and soft, thrown over him. He carefully raised himself on one elbow to look around. He was facing the back of the cart, which allowed him to see that the sun was rising just beyond the hills. He could hear somebody whistling a cheerful jig behind him, probably the driver. The cart itself was nearly empty except for him, the straw, a small wooden trunk on the left side, and a dark vest, pants, and shirt hanging from one of the roof supports. Occasionally, a drop of water would fall from the garments, splattering on the floor of the cart.

At this point, Javert realized he was not dressed.

- - - -

A cry somewhere between anguish and anger from the back of the cart made the driver jump, his whistle dying mid-tune.

"Finally awake, me boy?" the man called back uncertainly. The only response was a furious rustling and thumping about, mixed with muted groans of pain. The man reined in the horses and jumped down from his seat, fearing that the poor soul in back was having some sort of fit. When he clambered up into the cart, however, he found the man fumbling with the buttons of his still-damp trousers. The driver sat back on his heels, watching the man with a smirk and shaking his head.

"Ye'll catch yer death wearing those. Ain't like there's a woman 'round ta see ya anyway. Be sensible and let 'em dry first."

Javert grunted and cinched his belt around his waist. Every movement shot pain through his body, but his sense of decency would not allow him to stop. Finally, with the belt fastened, he knelt panting and shirtless atop the hay, completely spent, shivering from the clammy feeling of the fabric. His hair hung in stringy, hay-flecked tangles around his face, making him look like a half-deflated scarecrow.

The driver sighed. "Now that M'sieur is dressed, may we continue without yer puttin' up a fuss back here?"

Javert lifted his head and scrutinized the driver, who shifted uncomfortably under the piercing, grey-eyed gaze.

"Who are you?"

The driver doffed his blue felt cap, revealing a halo of gray curls around the balding crown of his head. "Tobar, at yer service."

"Where are you taking me, Monsieur Tobar?" Javert was trying to sound intimidating, accusing, but all he could manage was a slight irritation.

The old driver shrugged. "Home. Er, my home, rather. Ye've been out cold since I pulled you out o' the Seine, lookin' like a drowned rat. Couldn't just let ye lay there--ye might have died! And thinkin' on it. . . what were ye doing out for a swim in the middle o' the night?"

_Escaping. Dying._

Javert couldn't bring himself to voice either of those answers. He sat, head hanging, gooseflesh breaking out along his arms and shoulders. But the man didn't go away, and finally he responded, "You should have left me."

Javert closed his eyes and did not open them until he heard the driver resume his position at the reins.

"Let's get you somewhere warm," the man called back. He sounded tired. Javert nodded to no one in particular, wrapped the blanket around himself, and lay down again in the straw.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for the reviews, folks!**

**Update 1/22/08: Fixed the spelling mistakes pointed out to me by LesMisLoony (thanks!).**

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The sun rose, and Javert dozed fitfully in the straw bed as the cart rolled on. He dreamed of the smell of gunsmoke, the glint of bayonettes, the color of blood. He dreamed of icy swirling water forcing its way into his nose and mouth. He dreamed of death. Every so often he woke, gasping. 

It was mid-morning before he heard the driver call his horse to a halt. Javert got to his knees again and reached up to touch the sleeve of his shirt where it hung from the roof. The fabric seemed mostly dry, and he pulled it down. There were rips and patches of blood smeared across both the front and the back, matching scrapes and cuts Javert could see on his own torso. The white fabric was stained with river mud, as well. He put it on anyway. It covered the bruises.

The driver appeared at the back of the cart and looked up at Javert.

"How are you feeling?"

In his mind, Javert ran through all the aches and pains in his body. His head was a bit better, now just a dull ache. The muscles in his arms and legs protested whenever he moved, but his limbs didn't seem broken. Even the cuts and scrapes that decorated his body had closed enough that they no longer oozed blood. The worst of the injuries had been bandaged in strips of cloth that he now recognized were torn from the blanket. No surprise that it looked so ragged, then.

"I am fine. Where are my boots?"

The driver gave him a pitying look. "A lost cause, M'sieur. The left was gone when I found ye, prob'ly lost in th' current. T'other was tangled in a mooring line. Had ta cut it off to pull ye out."

Javert sighed and made a move to get out of the cart. The driver stepped back and Javert gingerly lowered himself to the ground. Pain ripped through his right ankle--it could barely support his weight. He groaned and started to fall, but the driver steadied him, helped him to lean back against the cart.

"I suppose I could get a couple o' the boys ta carry you over to the tents," Tobar said, scratching his head.

"No!" Javert nearly shouted at the man. He'd suffered enough indignity already; no one was going to carry him anywhere. He tried again to walk, forced himself through three steps along the side of the cart before he could do no more. Frustrated, he leaned back against the wooden frame again, pounding it once with his fists in frustration.

"Stay there," the driver admonished. "I'll find ye a cane."

The man headed around the other side of the cart, and Javert leaned around the edge to watch him go. He expected to see a house, or a cottage, or maybe just a hovel. But there was no building. Instead, the cart was stopped a short distance from a circle of other carts, wagons, and tents. Over a fire in the center of the circle was a goose being roasted on a spit; the scent of the meat reminded him of just how hungry he was. He caught sight of a woman with a baby in a sling resting upon her chest. Her skin was a rich, tawny color, same as Tobar the driver's; her hair was nearly black, long and wavy under a scarf of pure scarlet, and she wore long skirts of bright patterned red and gold fabric that swung with her as she walked. She sang to her baby in a language that Javert could not understand. The melody drifted over him until it snagged on a memory. In his mind, Javert saw his mother's face close to his, her eyes closed, singing. She sang that same song--a Gypsy song.

_Merde._

His first instinct was to run, to get away from the memory, away from the song. One tentative step later, he knew for certain that running was not an option. His ankle simply would not carry him. He listened. The woman's voice was soft and lilting, not at all like the blurry rasp of his mother's voice after she had fallen ill, her voice gone prematurely old from consumption.

A few moments later and Tobar returned with a roughly carved walnut cane, which he handed to Javert. The injured man accepted it and took a few experimental steps. It still hurt to walk, of course, but he was at least moving under his own power.

"Come on, then," Tobar said and started leading him towards the circle. Javert briefly considered turning around and hobbling as fast as he could in the other direction. But the smell of food beckoned--between his capture at the barricades and his attempt at drowning himself, he hadn't eaten in more than two days--and he found himself moving towards the encampment almost unconsciously.

- - - -

As they approached the campfire, Javert could feel the uncomfortable weight of thirty eyes all on him. A word from Tobar sent three young boys scrambling off a bench by the fire, and the driver helped Javert to sit there with his injured leg up. A woman came up behind him to offer a tin plate with sliced goose meat and roasted potatoes, which he accepted and thanked her for, though he had no idea whether she understood what he said to her. Tobar pulled her aside for a moment and they had a short conversation while Javert ate. He struggled not to simply shovel the food into his mouth; his sense of propriety forced him to take reasonable bites and chew thoroughly, though his stomach protested the delay. Nevertheless, it was mere minutes before the plate was empty. The woman whisked it away, and Tobar sat down next to Javert by the fire.

"Yer appetite seems to 'ave survived uninjured."

Javert nodded. "Please thank your wife for me, for the meal."

Tobar's grin lit up his face and crinkled around his eyes. "I will at that. Now, M'sieur, are ye up to answering a few questions?"

Javert's expression tensed for a moment, but he nodded. It was only fair, after all, to this man who rescued him--even though rescue was the last thing Javert had intended for himself.

"Good. First, can ye tell me yer name?"

Even a simple question like that forced Javert to think for a moment before answering. How far did Monsieur l'Inspecteur's reputation extend beyond the reaches of Paris? Would a clan of Gypsies know the name? If they did, how would they react? He was not well-loved among the criminal element. But then again, he was no longer an inspector, either--the letter he left at Place du Chatelet had sealed that chapter of his life. In a moment, he reached a compromise in his mind.

"My name is Etienne," he responded, offering his given name, which he rarely used outside of official documents.

"What were ye doing in the river?"

"Drowning."

Tobar laughed, but there was no joy in it. "Indeed ye were. Perhaps my question should be, were ye there intentionally?"

Javert drew a soft breath. "Yes, I was."

Tobar nodded, seemingly to himself, his expression thoughtful. "I figured as much, the way ye acted when ye woke up. Can I ask why?"

Javert sighed. He knew this question was coming eventually. But how to explain it? What brought him to make his final report, return to the Pont Notre-Dame, and throw himself into the rapids of the Seine? Jean Valjean entered into the equation, certainly. But try as he might, Javert could not lay blame for his own actions on the shoulders of a former convict who freed him from captivity at the barricades. No, the fault fell solely to Javert. To his failure. To his imperfection. His years of devotion to one case were wasted in the space of a single breath. Ten years, gone. It felt like a lifetime.

"I thought it best," he said simply. "I have wasted my life."

"Wasted how?"

Javert shrugged. "It's not important."

"Would no one miss ye?"

"No."

"No family, or friends?"

"No."

"I see." The driver gazed into the fire, which was dying down, fading to embers. After a few moments, he changed the subject.

"Ye have the look of a Rom, but yer not one, far as I can tell. Who were yer parents?"

Another pause, this one longer. "I did not know my father. My mother was a Gypsy, a fortune-teller in Rouen."

"Ye share our blood, then, if not our life. My clan's out of Rouen, as well. What was her name? I might'a known her."

"I doubt that very much. She was imprisoned in Rouen when I was born, and passed away there only a few years later. Her name was Oriana."

Tobar shook his head, saying, "I don't know the name." They sat in silence for a little while, each gazing into the fading coals of the fire.

"May I ask you a question?" Javert asked after a time. Tobar nodded.

"Why did you pull me from the river?"

Tobar shrugged. "It seemed like th' thing ta do. Not in my nature ta watch a man drown."

"What were you doing at the river at that time of night?"

"That was a rare bit o' luck," Tobar said with a grin. "My cart was confiscated by the _gendarmes_ yesterday mornin'. Last night, with them all distracted at the barricades, I took it upon meself to, ah, liberate it. In the spirit of things, understand? They were storin' it down by the docks, where I found ye."

Javert's stomach knotted up. Rescued by a criminal. Again. _Mon dieu... _He swallowed harshly.

"I suppose I should thank you," Javert said, his voice surprisingly steady for how he felt. Tobar shook his head.

"I understand if ye don't. It's a harsh world we're in." He leaned over and patted Javert on the shoulder. "Livin's the greatest challenge there is, right? Anyway," he said, "Ye've got a place to stay here, 'til yer a bit more mobile."

"I will thank you for that, Monsieur Tobar."

Tobar nodded and stood, offering a hand to Javert. "Come 'ere, let's introduce you 'round." Javert allowed the man to help him up, and with the aid of the cane, followed him towards the carts.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi everyone, I'm back with another chapter. **

**Confidential to AmZ: Yes. He's doomed. Mwahahaha... **

**...er, maybe not. :) **

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It took two weeks for Javert's ankle to heal to the point where he could walk on it for any length of time, and so until then, he had little choice but to travel with the Gypsies. Tobar and his wife, Drina, were kind to Javert; the first thing Drina did, after Tobar found an extra shirt and pants for the man, was launder and mend his clothing, and Tobar offered him the privacy of the cart to sleep in. The others were not bad to him--upon seeing his bare feet, one man offered him an old pair of boots, which Javert accepted gratefully--but they still eyed him with varying amounts of suspicion, as he did all of them, even Tobar. Unless they were talking directly to him, none of the clan spoke in French, and Javert's grasp of Romani had deteriorated since early childhood to the recognition of a few simple words that he could recall after much effort: _day_ was the word for "mother", _bogacha_ was "bread". When they spoke about the _gadjo_, however, he knew immediately that they were talking about him. 

He fell into the rhythm of their travels quickly: on the road for one day, stopping in a town to sell the next. They were always busy, all except for Javert, who for the first two days watched the steady hum of activity with growing irritation at his inability to work. He hated to sit idle while others around him were busy, and on the third day, he asked Tobar if there was anything that he could do, any job to help them and keep himself occupied.

Tobar looked at Javert skeptically. "Yer not a crafstman, are ye?"

Javert shook his head. "I am afraid not, but still, there must be something."

So Tobar asked the others, and one man offered Javert the job of polishing the tin mugs and kettles he produced. Javert accepted readily and put all his concentration and effort into the work. He was not adept at it, nor even as fast as either of the tinsmith's sons, but he made up for a lack of skill with a drive for perfection. After the first day, Tobar joked, "Give him enough time, and Etienne could make all our cups fit for shaving mirrors!"

And so during the days, he was busy and tried not to think too much about how he had arrived at such strange circumstances. But at night, he lay awake. There were times, right on the edge of sleep, when for a moment he felt himself falling again, and echoes of that night would run through his head. He remembered the sound of the water roiling beneath him, the glittering lamp-lit surface drawing closer and closer until he closed his eyes just before impact. And he remembered his last conscious thought before his head hit bottom and blackness swallowed him: _Dieu, me pardonnent._

_God, forgive me._

He had said to many prisoners over the years, those who appealed to his mercy, "The Lord may forgive, but The Law cannot." It was a formulaic response, something some mentor had taught him long ago, when he first came to _la prefecture_, to quell the complaints of criminals. But in Javert's mind, there was no forgiveness--only atonement. He was not a religious man, but his years as a child in a Catholic school had taught him one thing: God did not care for penitence, but penance.

He hated that, in his weakest moment, he had prayed for a boon that he believed God would never grant. But he hated more that he could not decide for which of his faults he begged forgiveness.

- - - -

The Gypsies and their charge followed the Seine north and west. By the time Javert's ankle was healed, they had reached the borders of Rouen. After they set up camp on the outskirts of town, Javert told Tobar that he would leave them the next day.

"Where will ye be off to?" Tobar asked.

"I'm not sure. I may remain in Rouen for a time."

"Ye got friends here?"

"As many as I had in Paris."

"Fair enough," Tobar replied, chuckling. He slipped a hand into his money pouch, pulled out a gold Napoleon, and pressed it into Javert's hand. Javert looked at it, puzzled.

"Yer wages," Tobar said by way of explanation. Javert continued to stare at the coin.

"I owe you as much for taking me in."

Tobar smiled and shook his head. "It's what any man would do fer another. Ought to, anyway."

Javert tried to hand it back, saying, "I have been another mouth to feed for these weeks. I earned for you far less than my bed and board."

"Keep it, please," Tobar said, looking hurt. Then, softer, "I cannot bear to send ye away too poor to buy a loaf of bread."

With a nod, Javert slipped the coin into his pocket.

"I can at least return your cane to you," Javert said. "I do not need it any longer." In truth, he hadn't needed it for most of the past two days, but he kept it with him anyway--he'd carried a nightstick at his side for so many years that he was uncomfortable without it.

Tobar's smile returned. "Ye can keep that as well. I've got others, and ye seem to have grown attached to it."

Javert looked at the cane, and, for the first time in many months, he gave a small smile.

"Thank you."

Javert offered the Tobar his hand, and they shook like old friends.

The next morning, Javert rose early, ate a breakfast of bread and boiled eggs with the Gypsies, and bundled up the extra set of clothes. Then, with a coin in his pocket and a cane at his side, he walked into Rouen.


	4. Chapter 4

**I must admit to a few misgivings about this chapter, but I will hold all self-criticism until I get some feedback.**

**In regards to length... I think there may be only one or two more chapters to this story, but it could easily expand into a series of some sort. Comments? Opinions? Angry gremlins? **

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A light, misty rain began falling as Javert crossed Pont d'Orleans into Rouen proper. It was just enough to cast a haze over the spires of _le Cathedral Notre-Dame de Rouen_, which towered above the city like stoic watchmen. The streets were familiar to him, in the same way that the Gypsy lullaby was familiar--he remembered walking the streets themselves, but without any understanding of where they led and how they connected. So he wandered, reading shop and street signs and peering down narrow alleyways. The rain fell off and on, and eventually he'd had enough of being perpetually damp. He came to a cafe along one of the side streets branching from Rue de la Republique and ducked in to dry off.

Inside the cafe, Javert found himself surrounded by a smoky din, the room already close to full despite it being early afternoon. He picked his way through the full tables to the bar, where the barkeep bustled around, shoving full mugs of ale and bowls of onion-rich stew to the men and women lined up at the counter. It took him a few minutes, but he finally got to Javert.

"What for you, then?" His voice was gruff and harried.

"The stew," Javert said. The man behind the counter turned to the large pot on the fire behind him and dug into it with a copper ladle, dishing the brown, pungent concoction into a crockery bowl.

"Three sou," he responded, holding out his hand.

Javert reached into his pocket and pulled out the Napoleon. The barkeeper squinted at him. "Mighty big coin for a man of little means." He leaned over the counter, still not setting down the bowl. "What'cha do to earn that, m'sieur?"

Javert bristled at the sneering accusation in the man's voice, even as a tight knot of trepidation settled in his stomach. His shirt and pants were obviously ragged and recently mended, his boots were another man's cast-offs, his silver-streaked hair was damp and stringy from the rain--small wonder that the man behind the counter would question the gold coin in his hand.

Nevertheless, Javert drew himself up to his full height and forced himself to recall the dignity of Monsieur l'Inspecteur. "It is two week's wages, for my work with a tinsmith."

The barkeeper's gaze went hard and cold, and he set the bowl on the counter as he snatched up the coin with his other hand, holding it in his palm to examine. Javert stood still, waiting. The man closed his hand around the coin before bending to put it in his cash box. When he stood up, he placed a small handful of change on the counter. Too small.

"I gave you a 20 franc coin," Javert said evenly. The fear was subsiding and he was beginning to get angry.

"Price went up," the barkeeper snorted.

"Do you mean to say that you are charging me five francs for a bowl of soup? Perhaps I should have ordered bread as well."

"What are you going to do about it, Gypsy?"

"I'm no--"

"Only tinsmiths 'round here are Gypsies. So either you're a Gypsy or a liar. Which is it gonna be?" The barman leaned over the counter, and for the first time Javert took careful stock of him. The barkeeper was massive, ruddy, and irritated. Javert was quite tall, and still this man had a good six inches on him, and a hundred pounds to boot--a physical confrontation would get ugly very fast.

"Look," Javert started, ignoring the question, "all I want is a meal at a fair price. You are obviously incapable of giving me that, so return my money and I will leave."

"You ain't getting your money back, so eat your damn soup and go. Or take it up with the _gendarmes_. You'll see what sort of welcome a Gypsy troublemaker gets around here." And with that, the barman turned away and began to wait on other customers.

Javert seethed as he gathered up the coins. Fifteen francs of Tobar's kindness remained.

He ate the stew only after convincing himself that there was nothing more that he could do, and that not to do so would be a complete waste of five francs. Protesting farther would likely mean taking the man on in a fight, and he was certain that the barman would win handily. Going to the police was an option as well, but that meant questions, and the word of an unkempt stranger against that of a business owner. Javert did not want to answer questions. Or go to jail, for that matter. Still, his anger was such that he left half the bowl uneaten.

- - - -

_Gadjo to the Gypsies, Gypsy to the gadjo..._

Javert mused as he walked in the dying light, hungry, tired, and growing increasingly cold as the wind and rain began to pick up. He'd been walking since he left the cafe, and he was far calmer now, but the twinge in his ankle warned that it could not go much farther.

As the sky grew dark, he found himself walking along Rue Jeanne d'Arc. All the shops were closed or closing, but one place remained open: _Eglise Saint-Vincent-sur-Rive_. The church. He paused before the door, drinking in the colors of the stained glass windows, glowing from the candle-lit interior. It was a church, yes, and Javert had little time for churches, or religion, or sometimes even God. But it was a _warm_ church, and Javert reckoned that he could stand a bit of preaching in exchange for the time he needed to dry off and warm up.

_A sermon is the price of a warm fire. Funny, that. I always thought the sermons were supposed to save one from the warm fire._

He was too tired to resist showing a small grin as he opened the door.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sorry for the long wait on this chapter. Also... think I might have been lying about the length before--this story is going to be a bit longer than I thought. And there is likely to be a series, or at least a sequel. Something. **

**Anyway, enjoy! **

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The scent of incense surrounded Javert as he entered the sanctuary, making him feel warm even before the door was closed completely. The smell was rich, sweet and powerful: myrrh, frankincense, cedar, and a few other things that he could not place, all backed by the bitter tang of charcoal. The smoke seemed to cling to him like treacle. 

He'd expected the church to be empty except for the priest, but there were people scattered throughout, kneeling or sitting, some with rosaries dangling from their clenched fingers. He walked as silently as he could down the center aisle and slipped into an empty pew near the back, leaning the cane against the seat next to him. No one seemed to notice that he had come in. After a few moments, he heard the creaking of a door behind him and saw a woman emerge from the confessional box at the rear of the sanctuary. After she was gone, a man rose and moved to take her place in the box. The only sound was the occasional rustling of clothing and muted whispers of prayer. Many of the prayers were in Latin, but one very old man, several rows in front of Javert, rocked slowly back and forth as he whispered a repeated chant

_"Dieu, me pardonnent. Dieu, me pardonnent." _

The words were nearly silent, but they seemed to ring in Javert's ears. Too familiar--too painfully familiar. The lead weight in his gut was back.

He tried to ignore the man by examining his surroundings. He hadn't seen the church in nearly fifty years, but it had that same Gypsy-lullaby familiarity. Fifty or sixty votive candles--half of them lit--stood in rows in front of an image of the Virgin Mary moulded in plaster. Those, plus the lanterns lit at regular intervals along the walls, filled the sanctuary with a golden-orange glow. The images in the stained glass were harder to discern without light filtering in from the other side, but he could manage. The common ones were easier to pick out--the crucifixion, for instance, with the gathered crowd and the men being executed on either side of Christ. The others were harder; he didn't know many of the saints depicted in the glass, or even all of the scenes from the Bible. In most of the windows, the colors seemed to blend together, dark and meaningless. The majority of the church was encrusted in ornate sculpture, statuary, gold leaf and crystal and marble. To Javert, it seemed gaudy, filled with art to the point of becoming ugly and claustrophobic. There was just too much, and it made him almost dizzy. He closed his eyes.

- - - -

Javert woke with a start, wrenching his shoulder out of the grasp of the man who had been shaking him. He reached down to his other side and had the cane in his hand almost before he opened his eyes. The dream faded, leaving in it's place the face of a priest, old and stern.

"Have you come to make a confession or simply to sleep in my church?"

Javert relaxed his grip on the cane. "I came to warm myself and to dry off. Falling asleep was purely accidental, I assure you. My apologies." Leaning heavily on the walking stick, he stood up. His legs were stiff and the ankle still twinged, but it was better for the rest he'd given it. The lamps along the wall had all been extinguished, leaving only the last few prayer candles and the lantern the priest was carrying as illumination. It was apparent that the anticipated sermon would not be forthcoming.

"You could have returned home and done the same," the priest grumbled.

"I am afraid not, though I thank m'sieur for the suggestion. I myself never would have considered it."

The priest narrowed his eyes. "You have no home then?"

Javert gave a short chuckle. "_Pére_, I am dead there."

The priest seemed startled. "_Un revenant, _then?"

"Correct in both senses of the word, _Pére_."

"Both?"

"A ghost, and returned from a long absence."

The priest sighed. "Well, Monsieur Revenant, I am afraid I cannot allow you to sleep in the sanctuary."

Javert nodded. "I understand." He moved to the center aisle and walked toward the doors. The priest called after him.

"If I may ask, where will you go?"

Javert shrugged, his back still turned. "Where ghosts sleep. The cemetery, perhaps."

"You have no money, then?"

He faced the priest. "Money, yes. But money is only good if a man can get something for it at a fair price. Experience has informed me that I cannot."

"You have been cheated, then?"

"I began this morning with twenty francs in my pocket." Javert pulled out the handful of coins, showing them to the priest. "I have fifteen now, and I have purchased only a bowl of stew."

"Wait a moment." The priest pulled a small notepad and a badly chewed pencil stub from the pocket of his cassock and hurriedly jotted down a note, which he tore from the pad and pressed into Javert's hand. "Turn right as you leave and walk two streets down to _Auberge le Roi_. It is not yet midnight; they will likely have a room open. Give this to Monsieur Girard, at the desk."

Javert looked at the note in his hand. It read, "This man shall have a room for the night. Do not charge him--the church will see to your repayment. Signed, Pére Nicolai Deveroux, Eglise Sainte-Vincent-sur-Rive." Another gift. Another kindness, from a creature who he would have disregarded mere weeks before. It was too much.

He tried to hand the note back to the priest. "You are gracious, Pére Deveroux, but I cannot accept."

"Why?"

"I did not come here seeking charity--only a short rest. My falling asleep in the sanctuary was most disgraceful, and I will not allow myself to burden you further."

The priest seemed surprised, but did not reach out to take the note back. He was silent for a while, and Javert felt awkward as he held the note out without looking at it, trying to avoid even the thought of accepting yet another mercy that he did not deserve. Finally,Pére Deveroux looked up at him and spoke in the same gruff manner in which he had woken Javert.

"Stay at the inn tonight. Return tomorrow, and we will discuss how you may repay the church."

It was Javert's turn to pause. He glanced at the note. _Auberge le Roi_--The King's Inn. His imagination began unbidden, conjuring up soft, warm beds, good food, and a room to himself. He ached for such things, comforts that he thought little of until they were not easily available to him. And he could certainly do some manual labor around the church. Sweeping, polishing, dusting...something. He looked at the priest again.

"When do you arrive in the morning?"

"Sunrise, for morning Mass. You are welcome to attend the service, if you would like. Afterward, I will have something for you to do."

He wanted to say no, and to leave. But a chill arose from just the thought of spending the night on a damp park bench. The warm bed at the inn seemed to call to him. He nodded. "I will be here. Thank you,Pére."

The priest gave him a half smile and nodded, making the sign of the cross in front of him. "Go in peace, Monsieur Revenant. I will expect you in the morning."


	6. Chapter 6

**My most sincere apologies (to anyone who cares) for seemingly abandoning this story. What can I say? It's been a heck of a year. I'm also very probably a bad person.**

**About a week ago, I realized that I missed writing "my" Javert--though it took me nearly the whole week to get his voice somewhere close to right**** again. Thus, a long-ish chapter (more practice for me, more reading for you--everyone wins!) More to come within the next two weeks--it'll even have a cohesive plot and everything!**

**Edited to add: thanks to Bramblefox, I have picked up the pronoun I so unceremoniously dropped before publishing the first time. Serves me right for proofreading my own work, I suppose.**

* * *

_Auberge le Roi_ did not disappoint. As Javert approached the inn, a young man wearing a tall hat and carrying a silver-capped cane stumbled through the doorway with an elegant and obviously inebriated young blonde woman, who giggled as he pulled her across the threshold. The man looked up with a foolish grin and bowed deeply, holding the door open as Javert entered.

Inside, the common room was nearly empty but for a few determined souls with brandy still in their cups, and an elderly man busily whisking a broom back and forth across the floorboards. Javert cleared his throat as he approached the man with the broom, but got no response. He tried again, closer and more loudly, but still the man continued sweeping.

"Excuse me, are you Monsieur Girard," Javert asked, trying to get within the man's line of sight. Finally the man looked up at him with a puzzled scowl.

"Are you Monsieur Girard?" Javert repeated. The man shook his head, gesturing to his ears and shrugging. Deaf. Javert handed him the note from Pére Deveroux.

The man studied it for a moment, and then nodded as if to himself. He leaned the broom up against the wall and scuttled back behind the counter to pull out a large ledger book. With one finger, he scanned back and forth across the pages for a few moments, then nodded and snapped the book shut. Grabbing a key from the pegboard behind him, he slipped out from behind the counter again and gestured to his guest to follow him.

The man led Javert up a narrow staircase and down the hall to a door marked number 6. With a click, Monsieur Girard turned the key in the lock and held the door open for Javert to enter. The space in the room was mostly consumed by the bed, which was centered against one of the short walls. A writing desk and cane chair stood in the corner, with an oil lamp that the innkeeper lit before handing the key to Javert and retreating down the stairs again. After latching the door and slipping his boots off, Javert considered the bed carefully. It had been more than a fortnight since he'd slept in a bed. Exhausted, he sat down and allowed himself to fall back onto it. If anything could have surpassed the exquisite comfort of the feather mattress and clean linens, Javert was certain such a thing would be illegal.

- - - -

The next morning, he woke, dressed in his second set of clothes, and descended the stairs just before dawn. There was a young, cheerful woman behind the counter this time, and he approached her to return the key.

"Good morning, M'sieur," she greeted him. "On your way so early?"

He nodded.

"Your room number, please?"

"Number six."

With a smile, she plucked the key from his hand and turned to hang it up again, then pulled out the ledger book. Javert fingered the remaining coins in his pocket, not sure whether to hope that the innkeeper had written down the instructions from Pére Deveroux or to hope that the old man had forgotten and he would be forced to pay—leaving far poorer than he intended, but at least without debt.

"Ah, paid in full last night. Funny—Grandpére must have forgotten to take your name, M'sieur." She looked up at him expectantly.

He paused for a moment, remembering his conversation with Pére Deveroux the previous evening.

"Revenant. Etienne Revenant."

She dutifully wrote it down, then followed the line over with her finger.

"You are owed breakfast, it says here," the young woman said, tucking the book away again. "What may I get for you, Monsieur Revenant? You're the first I've seen up, and there's coffee and fresh bread. I have some ham and eggs, too, if you're willing to wait a bit."

He was anxious to return to the church, but before he could reply, his stomach growled and he reconsidered the wisdom of committing to a day's labor without a meal first. Hoping the young lady had not noticed, he nodded.

"That would be more than acceptable, Mademoiselle."

"Of course, M'sieur." She started towards the stove, and Javert settled himself at a table near the counter.

"That's an odd name, Revenant," Mademoiselle Girard called back after a few moments of silence. "Where do you come from?"

"Paris," Javert responded.

"Ah, what luck, I've never been there. Is that where you're headed? Back home?" she asked.

"Not yet." _Not ever_.

"What did you do in Paris?"

His heart skipped a beat before he reminded himself that she was referring to his occupation. It was a good question, one he had been considering since his experience the day before. Giving a false name was one thing—during the time he spent with Tobar and his clan, he realized that he could no longer go by the name of Javert, regardless of whether or not it was known to others. That Pére Deveroux had given him a workable pseudonym by accident was fortunate. But he hated to lie outright; he was not a common criminal, nor some shady dealer of snake oil cures.

Claiming to be a tinsmith was right out. Saying he was an inspector had the virtue of being true, "was" being the operative word. However, calling oneself an inspector had the unfortunate effect of causing others to be wary, and he considered himself too young to pass as a retiree.

The main trouble with this question, though, was that he had not decided on a response, and the pause in conversation was running too long.

"I was a tailor," he finally answered, plucking up the first inoffensive job title that popped into mind. It wasn't hopelessly untrue, he supposed—lacking the money to send his clothes out for repair, he'd done his own mending for most of his life and was fairly handy at it.

"Oh,' she said, "My father is a tailor, on Avenue d'Ouvrier. Henri Girard." She flashed a grin back at him. "You're not here to set up shop, are you?"

"No."

"You should go introduce yourself to him," she continued. "He likes new people. Always asks who I've met while I'm here, wants me to tell him stories." Some little apprehension must have shown on Javert's face, because the next time the young woman turned around, she quickly added, "Don't fret, Monsieur, I won't mention you if you'd rather I didn't."

She continued chatting pleasantly as she worked, with Javert supplying the occasional ums and ahs that encouraged her to continue speaking. He observed her through the pass-through window in the same practiced way he'd watched other people for years—closely attentive but without staring. As a mental exercise, he considered the things he could learn from her appearance and mannerisms. Her auburn hair was hastily put-up, slightly askew, and that plus a slight clumsiness as she poured his coffee made him sure that her good cheer hid a natural distaste for the early hours. The hem of her dress was recently replaced, the fabric too crisp in relation to the wear that softened the rest of the skirt, and it told him that she was not poor at present, but came close at times. In her voice he caught a hint of roughness that spoke of time spent in the presence of smoke and alcohol—perhaps a café, or simply the common room of the inn—and from her choice of language it was likely a place that catered to laborers and working men.

As he watched her, thoughts floated to the forefront of his mind. The first was that the Mademoiselle Girard was possibly quite pretty. It had been so long since his last prolonged contact with young women of decent social standing that he had forgotten how they were meant to look.

By the time she brought his breakfast, after perhaps ten minutes spent recounting her introduction to the handsome young woodcarver who liked to set up his stall across the street, a second thought had pushed its way into Javert's awareness: Mademoiselle Girard talked too much.

- - - -

Soon after, Javert found himself seated on the steps of the church in the morning sun, listening to the murmur of Latin plainsong coming from the closed door behind him. The skies were clear and bright, and the previous day's rain seemed to have scoured the city clean. He stretched his arms behind him, leaned back, and breathed in deeply. It was so strange, he thought, to feel this peaceful. He tried to remember the last time he'd experienced the sensation, and utterly failed. Perhaps, he surmised, he had never felt like this before. The thought gave him pause. He ran through the various epochs of his life as he remembered them, searching.

Childhood? No—birth in a prison is an ignominious beginning, and for a long time his life grew little better. His mother was Romani, abandoned by her family for taking up with a Parisian thief, and then abandoned by said thief when he discovered that she was both pregnant and consumptive. Her death fell somewhere just beyond the edges of Javert's memory.

He was raised by the church as a charity case, fortunate compared to those orphans who ended up on the street, but still an outcast from the start. He was intelligent, certainly, and could recall verbatim nearly everything that was told to him, but he had the devil's own time learning to read and write. Words had a funny way about them when put down on the page—when he was young he occasionally suspected that they moved without his knowledge, because they never seemed to stay the same as when someone else read them. They flipped and squeezed together or stretched apart in front of his eyes until he could make no sense of them. His teachers accused him of failing to study, beat him for laziness, and called him an imbecile and an idiot child. He took ever greater pains when completing his schoolwork, sometimes working late into the night by candlelight in preparation for the next lesson. His scores improved, but at the cost of leisure time, and often sleep as well. It came a little easier as he grew older, but he still read slowly and with great care, and never for the pleasure of it.

His classmates were worse. To them, he was a poor Gypsy, a creature almost below consideration already. Once they discovered that the slender, somber boy could barely read or write, they abused him constantly. They taunted him, threw him into snow banks and mud puddles, tore the pages of his copy book on which he'd worked so many hours hoping to avoid further punishment, and kicked or tripped him when the schoolmaster was not looking. Complaints earned him nothing more than doubting looks and further mistreatment. He learned quickly that the way to prevent continued humiliation was to avoid the others, and when that was impossible, to endure their torment silently.

After that came a slow but steady climb up the ranks of the _gendarmes_, from an assistant to the guards at Toulon to Inspector First Class in the Paris prefecture. In Toulon he learned to be exacting, and at times barely avoided descending to base cruelty. As an Inspector, he learned to be tenacious. He'd spent more than a decade chasing after the man Valjean, a chase that brought him no time for relaxation, and which he had been unable to end except by giving himself over to Death. The night the barricades fell, he discovered that Death had no use for him, and so it gave him back, with the admonishment to rest.

And so rest he did, there in front of the church with the sun streaming down on his face. Behind him, he could hear the voice of Pére Deveroux reading the final Gospel of the Mass—specifically, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, a passage Javert himself had learnt by heart as a boy. He strained his ears to pick up the verse:

"Non erat ille lux, sed ut testimónium perhibéret de lúmine. Erat lux vera quæ illúminat omnem hóminem veniéntem in hunc mundum."

_He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light, that was the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. _

Javert rose from the steps with the assistance of his cane and brushed the dust from his trousers. The churchgoers would exit soon enough, and then it would be time to meet with the priest. Javert smiled at the thought. At least one of the debts he'd incurred would be paid in full.


End file.
